


all things grow

by sunfiree



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Angst, Fluff, M/M, Post-Canon, ish, slow-burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2019-08-27 18:18:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16707604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunfiree/pseuds/sunfiree
Summary: A smile dances across the corners of Fai’s mouth. “Thank you,” he says. He puts his own hands on top of Kurogane’s. His fingers are cold and smooth to the touch, but their weight is comforting in its steadiness.Post TWC. Kurogane and Fai are settling into their new lives in Nihon when a string of murders threatens to destroy not only Suwa, but their growing relationship.





	1. i.

**Author's Note:**

> title from "impossible soul" by sufjan stevens. 
> 
> (believe it or not, they're not in an established relationship yet.)

 

**I am a man with a heart that offends**

**with its lonely and greedy demands**

\- “john my beloved” by sufjan stevens

 

i.

 

In his dreams, he runs down the deserted hallways of Shirosaki castle, chasing an enemy that lingers just beyond the edge of his vision. It laughs and taunts him as it dances out of sight, always just out of reach of his sword, its formless body writhing across the stone tiles silently, gracefully. The thud of his boots against the stone floor echoes in his ears, jarring against the harsh silence. He runs until his breath starts leaving his lungs in short, harsh pants, and the sweat from his brow drips into his eyes, obscuring reality even further.

Ginryuu soon starts feeling heavy in his hands, and the burn in his muscles becomes too painful to ignore. He stops, hunched over and gasping for air. And then there’s a sudden drop in the temperature around him; a new ice cold that permeates his skin, inching up the exposed skin on his arms, raising goosebumps along its path. His mouth runs dry, and there’s a flash of something dark at the back of his eyes, and then _he can’t breathe_.

The creature wraps around his chest slowly, almost sensually, and then snakes up his throat, squeezing until it’s choking the life out of him. Its touch is smooth and cold, the chill seeping through his skin to the very bone. He jerks his shoulders back instinctively, tries to bend his arms, to pry the dark tendrils off his body, but it slips through his fingers like smoke, like the finest sand. It digs so hard into his skin that it almost feels like it’s trying to get _inside_ him.

 The thought frightens him enough that he lets out a sharp cry, and the creature stills, almost curiously. He takes advantage of the distraction to wrench his sword arm free of its grip and he pulls his arm back, as high as it can go. Hand trembling, he stabs straight through the centre of his left shoulder where the black is densest, and then there’s a howling noise in the air, and it takes him a moment to recognise it as the mixture of his own scream and the creature’s high-pitched wailing. It detangles itself from his body, quick as lightning, and writhes on the floor, its countless limbs flailing in agony.

Backing away, he breathes a sigh of relief, and then slowly begins pulling Ginryuu out. Candy red blood drips from its jagged edge, the soft _drip-drip-drip_ of it onto the floor oddly mesmerising. He looks away, casts a glance back at the creature and immediately notices that its face is no longer pitch black and amorphous. Staring back at him are Fai’s blue eyes, impossibly wide and betrayed in a way Kurogane hasn’t seen since Fai had woken up in Tokyo, alive and suddenly tied to him in a way neither of them could have ever anticipated.

Kurogane’s eyes are drawn to the bright red seeping through the clothing around Fai’s heart, staining through the white fabric in plumes of colour, like spilt wine. He stumbles backwards, the acrid taste of bile rising in his throat, choking him. There’s a gurgling sound coming from Fai’s throat, and he spits up blood, spattering his lips and the pale skin around his mouth. Kurogane’s knees give out entirely, and he falls to them, crawling over to Fai’s body and gathering him into his arms. Fai’s body is cold and his chest is still and his eyes are scared and there’s blood on Kurogane’s hands and he’s dead and he’s dead and he’s dead and Kurogane’s heart is thudding so hard it’s about to splinter through his ribs and _this is not happening._

 _T_ _his is a dream_ , he thinks, this is a nightmare, this is a nightmare so vivid he can taste the copper of Fai’s blood and the salt of his own tears on his tongue and he can feel the warmth seeping out of Fai’s unmoving body and he doesn’t understand _oh god what did he do, what did he do, what DID HE DO?_

He wakes like he’s coming up for breath after holding his head for too long underwater, gasping and heart beating double time in his chest. A few minutes go by before he manages to control his breathing and pry open his eyelids. It’s dark - too dark to make out anything in his room, except the faint outline of someone resting on his chest. Dimly, he notes that he’s sweated through his nightshirt, and he feels sticky and uncomfortable in a way reminiscent of Suwa summer nights. Sighing, he attempts to relax into his pillow, trying not to disturb his visitor.

Nowadays, more often than not, Fai sleeps in his bed. He’s either already in there before Kurogane is, tucked away on the left side in a tight ball, or he climbs in when the sun is about to rise, carefully lifting Kurogane’s arm over his body and squeezing his eyes shut. Fai spends some days pouring over Kurogane’s mother’s old magic tomes, other days he goes out to town and mothers clutch their children closer when he walks by, and occasionally Kurogane’s own patience runs thin and they end up arguing; those lead to the nights when Fai joins him to sleep.

And Kurogane can’t deny Fai anything - not anymore - so he relents every night, simply pulling Fai into his arms and rocking him to sleep. Tonight, the sight of him is enough to calm Kurogane all the way down, and he reaches out to brush one hand through Fai’s hair, the other slipping under his nightshirt to stroke down the silken skin of his back. His hair slips through Kurogane’s fingers like silk; he had brushed it out for Fai the night before, and he works out any remaining tangles as gently as he can.

Fai stirs slightly, lifting his cheek from where it’s pressed against Kurogane’s chest. There’s an odd pain in shoulder, the same one he’d impaled in his dream, and it throbs in response to the weight of Fai’s head.

“Kuro-sama,” Fai mumbles sleepily, and his voice is a soothing balm against the lingering memory of Kurogane’s nightmare.

“Shhh,” says Kurogane, rubbing comforting circles into Fai’s skin. “Go back to sleep.”

Fai shifts more vigorously in his arms. “What’s wrong?” he asks, sitting up. The shift in his weight aggravates the phantom pain in Kurogane’s shoulder, and a low hiss escapes through his gritted teeth.

Fai whispers a spell under his breath, and suddenly their room is illuminated in a soft amber glow, revealing Fai’s alarmed eyes. Kurogane stares at them, and the bitter memory of dream-Fai’s lifeless eyes still grates at him, and he tries to turn away, so he won’t be caught in that gaze. So he won’t get lost in it.

“You’re holding your shoulder,” says Fai.

Kurogane hadn’t even noticed. “I’m fine,” he says.

Fai’s eyes narrow, and he climbs off Kurogane’s lap to move behind him. He’s about to protest when Fai’s fingers dig into shoulder, gentle but firm, and Kurogane can't help but relent to the impromptu massage. After a while, Fai’s fingers start moving in a circular motion, pressing even deeper, and Kurogane lets out a groan.

“Does it feel good, Kuro-sama?” Fai says, leaning his head back around to look at Kurogane, this time with bright eyes, lips quirked up in a small smile.

“You already know the answer to that,” says Kurogane, pushing Fai back behind him to continue.

“Maybe I just want to hear you say it,” says Fai, and his movements pause for a moment so he can rest his forehead on the upper vertebra of Kurogane’s back, long eyelashes tickling his skin. “What’s wrong with your shoulder? It’s not your right one, so it has nothing to do with your prosthetic, has it?”

Kurogane stays silent. He reaches backwards and catches both of Fai’s wrists in his hands instead. They’re frighteningly thin, and Kurogane can see every blue-green vein, feel every bump and ridge. “Stop,” he says, and glares at Fai when he opens his mouth to retort. “You need to sleep.”

“I don’t,” Fai says. “But I need to know you’re okay.”

The words hang in the night air between them, and vibrant red blood drips from Fai’s chest in his mind, a lifeless gaze, a chasm between them; close enough to share one breath yet somehow worlds apart. Kurogane loves Fai - that is an indisputable fact. He loves him enough to give him his arm, his blood, his own life, but he cannot give him this - to burden Fai with the dreams in which Kurogane kills him, in which he hurts him in a way he’s vowed to never do. Fai has suffered enough, and Suwa was supposed to _heal_ them both; they were supposed to finally be _safe_.  

“I’m fine,” Kurogane finds himself repeating. “Really.”

“We’ll talk more about this in the morning, OK?” says Fai, already settling back down to curl up against Kurogane’s side.

He thanks the gods it’s still early and Fai’s too tired to argue any further, and he closes his eyes, settling his hands back under Fai’s nightshirt, onto his back. He falls asleep just like that, with the scent of Fai’s lavender hair oil tickling his nose, and he dreams of nothing at all.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The next morning, Kurogane wakes up and rolls over, throwing his arm across the bed. When he encounters only the bed, and not warm skin, he leans up on his elbows, squinting at the bright light streaming through the high windows. Fai’s gone, and it would have almost seemed as if he was never there if it weren’t for the lingering smell of his hair and the wrinkles in the bed sheets. Sighing, he throws his arm over his face, thinking about the day ahead of him.

Kyotani, the head guardsman, had requested that Kurogane come to town to help decide patrol routes and organise schedules for the coming season. Fai would be seeing townspeople all day for charms and blessings, and then he’d help Kurogane budget for the next month. He had, despite Kurogane’s misgivings, proven himself to be skilled with numbers (“It’s like magic!” Fai had said, though Kurogane hadn’t and still doesn’t understand what he’d meant), unlike Kurogane himself, whose patience would quickly run out when the sums would come out either incredibly large or too small.

He eyes the height of the sun in the sky, and judges that he has some time to spare before Kyotani was due to arrive. Sitting up and stretching his arms over his head, he decides to work out the remaining tension in his shoulders with some early morning training. He gets out of bed, pulling on a light shirt with his sleep trousers and making his way through to the training room.

He can hear the distant sound of Fai’s light voice and another - unfamiliar - female one and it brings an involuntary smile to his face. Fai’s already started seeing people for the day. He lets the echo of Fai’s soothing voice wash over him, and closes his eyes, savouring the moment before he starts his training.

“Kurogane-sama.” The voice breaks him out of the moment, and he opens his eyes slowly. He turns around to face Kyotani. She’s a tall woman - almost as tall as him - with short, choppy black hair and dressed in the typical guardsmen armour, only with a black sash tied around her upper arm to indicate her rank.

“Kyotani-san,” he greets. “I wasn’t expecting you so early.”

Her lips are set in a firm line, and the creases around her forehead are deeper than usual. “The Tokayami’s are dead,” she says bluntly.

“Dead?” he repeats incredulously. “How?”

“We don’t know yet,” she says, hand coming up to press against her temples. Her armour clinks with the movement. “But it’s odd. I was doing my morning rounds when the neighbour’s boy found me – he was hysterical, telling me that he’d seen their bodies lying still on the floor through the window. I went and checked it out - the children had their throat slit but the man. He was stabbed in the heart.”

Kurogane feels a sudden, visceral lurch in his gut when he remembers the feeling of seeing red, red blood seep through Fai’s clothes in his dream. He’d killed Fai in his dream. He’d _stabbed him in his heart_. Some measure of the shock he feels must be reflected on his face because Kyotani crosses the room and lays a hand on his arm. He can’t even find the energy to shrug it off.

“He’s married,” he says instead, recalling the last time he’d been in the bakery to buy Fai the milk bread he’s fond of. “Where’s his wife?”

“We can’t find her,” says Kyotani. “Don’t worry about it, though,” she adds, voice firm. “I’ll find the person responsible. I just thought you should know about it.”

He’s suddenly reminded of why he likes this woman. “I’m not worried,” he says, his voice sounding controlled and steady in contrast to his how he’s feeling. “And you were right to tell me. I’ll come over later to see what happened.”

“Understood,” she says.

“And close down the house. Don’t let anyone else in or out in the meantime.”

She gives a sharp nod. “Say hello to Fai-san for me,” she says, eyes softening momentarily, and then turning to leave. She’d been one of the few Suwa citizens who’d accepted Fai relatively quickly, and Kurogane will always be grateful because her approval had sparked others to follow suit. She’d spoken to Fai when he and Kurogane had first arrived in Suwa and then turned around, grin as sharp as it was unexpected, to tell Kurogane that Fai “reminds me of my wife” and that was the end of that.

He goes back to his bedroom to change into his formal clothes, and then follows the sound of Fai’s voice to the altar. Kurogane finds him lighting the ceremonial candles. He’s dressed in the traditional priest robes, white fabric carefully pinched around his waist and billowing out at the ankles. His hair is pulled into a plait, braided through with the red ribbon Kurogane had gifted him the week before and the sun filters through from the wide window, catching the colour of it, weaving gold out of the pale strands. He’s smiling at the little girl he’s carefully holding, wide and sincere, and Kurogane doesn’t want to interrupt the moment, to see Fai’s smile dull and fade away.

The girl’s mother, who sits facing Kurogane, notices his arrival and stands from her cross-legged position on the floor.

“Yume,” she says. The girl’s head snaps away from Fai to look at her mother questioningly. “I think it’s time to leave,” finishes the mother, eyeing Kurogane.

Fai follows her gaze, and his smile gets impossibly wider. He waves his free arm in a beckoning gesture and Kurogane shifts off the wall he’s leaning on to make his way over to them.

Suwa’s people, like this woman, were still wary of him. They’d had an interim lord in the time he’d been gone - a man named Ishida who had, from what Kurogane had surmised, been a fair and kind ruler; Amaterasu had chosen well. He’d graciously backed away when Kurogane had returned to claim his birth right, touting a new, mechanical arm and a strange magician along with him.

“Kuro-sama,” says Fai, delighted. “Come join us! I was just letting Yume help me light the altar candles.”

The girl moves the lit splint she’s carefully holding over to another candlestick and it flickers to life.

“Keep up that good work,” says Kurogane, “and we’ll have to hire you as our full-time candle-lighter.”

The girl giggles. “There’s no such thing!” she says.

Kurogane feels a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. “Then we’ll make up a new job, just for you,” he says, unable to not indulge her.

He casts a glance back to Fai, who is watching him carefully, mouth parted slightly. When he sees that Kurogane’s noticed him, he quickly turns around, one arm still holding the girl, the other reaching out to pick up a small bag sealed with Kurogane’s family crest.

“If you take this and hang it up above Yume’s bed, it should keep the bad dreams away,” he says to the mother.

She nods, then collects the girl from Fai’s arms. “Thank you,” she says to him, bowing deep. The girl, charmingly, does the same.

Fai’s face is slightly pink. “Oh, don’t be silly!” he says. “It’s my job.”

The mother smiles back at him, and Kurogane can see that she’s fallen victim to Fai’s particular brand of charm. He can sympathise.

“Even so,” she says. “Goodbye, Fai-sama, Kurogane-sama.” And with that, she leaves, holding her daughter in one hand, tightly clutching the bag in the other.

And they’re alone. A few beats of silence go by. “I made one for you as well,” says Fai, breaking it.

“Why?” Kurogane asks.

“I heard you tossing and turning last night,” Fai says, slowly. “You were saying my name.”

“Yes.” He didn’t think Fai had heard his nightmare, and he feels oddly vulnerable at the thought. “Even in my sleep you don’t stop annoying me.”

Fai grins at him then, but it’s a pale imitation of its normal self.

“I need to talk to you,” says Kurogane, reminded of Kyotani’s news.

“You’re already talking to me,” Fai teases, but Kurogane can see the flash of worry in his eyes, the tightening of his shoulders.

“There was a family in town that was murdered, sometime yesterday.”

Fai’s face pales, eyes widening. “Which family?” he asks.

“The Tokoyami’s.”

“They’re the bakers, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” says Kurogane.

Fai worries his lower lip between his teeth. “OK,” he says. “When are we going to see what happened?”

Kurogane sighs. “I’m going by myself,” he says, as carefully as he can. He doesn’t want to involve Fai in this more than he already has; they’ve only been living in Suwa for a few months, and they’ve just settled into a routine that fits them. It had been rough those first few weeks – especially for Fai, who had missed Syaoran like a phantom limb. At times, Kurogane had even questioned Fai’s decision to go with him rather than Syaoran when they had parted ways. It had hurt – a surprising amount.

Fai’s demeanour changes, almost instantly. His eyes narrow and his voice turns chilly. “What?” he says, and it doesn’t sound like a question.

“You don’t need to see this,” explains Kurogane.

Fai’s mouth twists, almost imperceptibly. “You don’t need to protect me, Kuro-sama,” he says, voice hard. And Kurogane can’t help but remember him in Piffle, in Recourt. Expression never faltering from its empty cheeriness, a flat-eyed stare with a mouth curved upwards – constant, even when he was angry, when he was upset.

“I know,” says Kurogane, as gently as he can. “But I want to.”

The harsh lines of Fai’s expression soften slightly. He sighs, shoulders dropping down. “I want to come with you,” he says, after a moment. “This is supposed to be my home as well,” he finishes, a touch nervously. He looks up at Kurogane from under the thick sweep of his eyelashes.

Kurogane’s surprised, despite everything. Fai’s learnt Nihon, he dresses in their style, he’s learnt the sort of magic required of priests here – the sort of magic that never came naturally to him, that he’d had to fight and claw his way to learn – but he’s never claimed it as his home.

In his bedroom, past the fine priest robes, behind the sleepwear and Kurogane’s stolen clothes, there’s a bag. Packed with light clothing and small bits of non-perishable food and a few coins. Kurogane had found it purely by accident; he’d been looking for a tunic he’d suspected Fai had pilfered from him and in his search he’d uncovered Fai’s escape plan. From Nihon, from Suwa. From him. The memory of finding it still stings, like rubbing salt in a fresh wound.

Kurogane puts his hands on Fai’s slim shoulders, thumbs brushing against his Adam’s apple, fingers tucked behind his neck. He feels a small shiver run up from Fai’s body, the vibrations dancing across the tips of his fingers. “Okay,” he says, holding Fai’s gaze and tightening the grip on his shoulders, and he never wants to let go.

A smile dances across the corners of Fai’s mouth. “Thank you,” he says. He puts his own hands on top of Kurogane’s. His fingers are cold and smooth to the touch, but their weight is comforting in their steadiness.

He wants to protect this man, to shelter him from the rest of the universe, to wrest any memory of sleeping kings and cursed twins from his mind. But Fai is right - Nihon is home for the _both_ of them now, however temporary it is for Fai. And Kurogane would not allow anything to happen to Suwa and the people he loved. Not again.

 

* * *

 

Sometime later, in the afternoon, they make the trek to the city. Fai’s wrapped up in a heavy cloak that nearly brushes the floor when he walks, and his face is half hidden in the thick fabric. Kurogane suspects it’s less a way to protect himself against the cold and more a way to obscure his identity to the rest of Suwa.

“You look ridiculous like that,” he says.

Fai’s head turns back to look at him. Kurogane makes out the ghost of a smile on his wan face.

“Kuro-sama, are you saying you miss the sight of my face?” he teases, voice sounding slightly too sing-song to be genuine.

“No,” says Kurogane. He snatches Fai’s hand out of the air, holding it in his. Fai stills. “Don’t let go,” he warns. Oddly enough, along with the memory of his dream, he can’t help but think about Shura; the cold fear he’d felt whenever he’d noticed the absence of his blond shadow, as the other soldiers had taken to calling Fai. The distance between them, unable to be bridged by communication, only growing and festering until Mokona and the kids had returned.

Fai’s strained smile mirrors his thoughts, and he nods, and they make the rest of their journey like that. Hands linked, silent.

“Kurogane-sama!” calls a young voice as they descend the final hill which leads into town.

A familiar looking dark-haired man with a small scar on his cheek waves at them. As they get closer to him, Kurogane recognises him as one of Kyotani’s guardsmen.

“Fai-san,” the man says when he notices Fai’s presence, startled.

“I’m just here to make sure Kuro-sama gets home on time,” says Fai lightly, already disentangling his hand from Kurogane’s.

The man laughs nervously, eyes flitting back to Kurogane.

Kurogane looks at him in the way Fai describes as his “death glare”. The man’s laughter cuts off abruptly. He clears his throat.

“Come this way, please,” he says, a weak tremble in his voice. He turns around and starts walking in the direction of the house, his simple armour clattering together as he moved.

Fai turns to look at Kurogane, amused, earlier discomfort already forgotten.

They follow the man (“It’s Kaneko, isn’t it?” Fai had whispered to him quietly) through a small, narrow alley and then into a house at the end of it. It’s average-sized, for Suwa at least, and seems perfectly normal, at least on the surface. It’s strange to think that it’s the site of three brutal murders.

Kaneko pushes open the door, holding it for Kurogane and Fai to walk through.

“Uh – be careful,” he murmurs to them, voice uneasy.

Kurogane pushes past him, walking through the hallway and into what seems to be the family room, Fai at his heels. 

The first thing that hits him is the smell. It’s the kind of rot that takes years to form; a musty sweetness that suffocates him in its unforgiving embrace. He tries to hold back the urge to gag and he notices Fai at the edge of his vision, still and unshaken. The sight anchors him somewhat, and he moves closer to take a better look at the sight on the floor, breathing shallowly through his mouth.

The bodies of a man and two children – little boys, roughly the same age – are sprawled out on the floor, the man curled around his kids, protective even in death. The boys are holding hands. Their throats are slit, a jagged, unpractised incision from one side of a small neck to the other. The man’s throat is untouched though, whole and pristine, but his shirt is soaked in blood and there’s a tear around the upper left section of his shirt. His heart. He’d been stabbed. Like Kyotani had said.

Kaneko stands at the doorway, holding the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “We found them like this,” he says. “Kyotani-san made us do a search of the house but we couldn’t find the woman anywhere. We’ve never seen anything like this before.”

Kurogane supposes he’s too young to remember the massacre of his parents. “Go find the doctor,” he orders. “He’ll arrange for the funeral.”

Kaneko nods and leaves, as quickly as he can; Kurogane doesn’t blame him. The atmosphere in the house is oppressive, the smell, sight and heavy weight of the air making the hair at the back of his neck stand on end. A sign of danger. 

Fai moves closer suddenly, touching his fingers against the man’s cheek. At first Kurogane thinks he’s closing the man’s eyes in respect for the dead, but then his face drains of all colour.

“What is it?” Kurogane asks him, pulling him up and aside. 

“A human did not do this,” Fai says, low and fast. “I’m not completely sure but I – I can sense something.”

“Are you sure,” he says, and it’s not that he doesn’t trust Fai’s instincts, but he doesn’t want to contemplate what “something” implies without being sure.

“I can sense it,” insists Fai.

Kurogane puts a hand on his upper arm and urges him towards the door. “Okay,” he says. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Gladly, Kuro-tan,” says Fai, following his touch easily.

When they get outside, it’s like he’s breathing for the first time. The crisp winter air fills his lungs and although the sun is hidden by clouds, some of its rays still shine across Suwa, and his eyes readjust to the light gratefully.

Fai steps closer to him. “Are you alright?” he asks, one hand reaching out to rest on Kurogane’s shoulder.

Kurogane shrugs it off. “I’m fine,” he says gruffly, internally berating himself for getting worked up over three corpses. He’s seen more and worse. He’s been the _cause_ of more and worse. There’s just something about this – this _house_ , those _kids_ – that’s getting under his skin, and it doesn’t help that all he can think of is his dream every time he looks at Fai, every time he thinks of Fai. Which, he’s come to realise, is a lot.

“We’re going home,” he says to Fai, who nods and tucks his cold hand into the bend of Kurogane’s elbow.

And they go, away from the house with its secrets, from the two little boys who would never grow up, from the father with a hole in his heart. And that night, his dream returns, but this time the creature catches him, ensnares him in its embrace, and he doesn’t resist – can’t resist – and when he wakes gasping for breath, it’s the sound of Fai’s name that’s on the tip of his tongue, loud and afraid.


	2. ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fai’s asleep now, though. Kurogane had left him in his bed, curled on his side under a mountain of woollen blankets. He'd woken from a fitful, half-remembered dream, sweat sticking to his skin and soaking the sheets, the taste of bile at the roof of his mouth, and had decided to start the day’s tasks early, certain that sleep would be evading him for the rest of the early morning. Kneeling in the freshly-turned soil, the scent of early-morning dew sticking to his bare skin, cradling earthworms in his palms, snipping stems and pruning leaves would take his mind off the sickness he felt, the clammy unease that had weighed down his shoulders for a few days now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: descriptions of violence and graphic injury

**Your grasses up north are as blue as jade,**

**Our mulberries here curve green-threaded branches;**

**And at last you think of returning home,**

**Now when my heart is almost broken....**

**O breeze of the spring, since I dare not know you,**

**Why part the silk curtains by my bed?**

****

Li Bai – _In Spring_

 

ii.

 

Surrounding his parent’s old home, stretching as far back as the eye can see, is a few hundred acres of flat, dry land; a broad, grassy expanse giving way only for a trifecta of ponds at the border closest to the house. His mother had kept koi, goldfinches and black moors in each of them, with the burden of responsibility for their feeding and cleaning falling mainly in Kurogane’s inexperienced hands, at least after he was old enough to shake off his irrational childhood fear of ( _drowning_ ) any body of water larger than a puddle. 

 

The fish are gone now, but the land had remained largely the same: still the ground his father had died on. The ground _he_ had died on, too, in a way; where he had bled, and wept, his tears and blood imprinted onto its memory, where his childhood of burnt lavender and sage incense infusing the midnight air; the sound of bare feet running down warm hallways; the dull thump of wooden swords colliding, again and again; the firm press of dry lips to his waiting forehead, where all this had ended, where it had gone from his reality to a half-remembered memory, faded and indistinct.

 

And it was this ground that he’d overturned when he’d returned to Suwa, that he’d dug up single-handedly with the blistering summer sun beating down on his sweat-soaked back, ripping out weeds – kudzu, knotweed, sorrel, burdock – and replacing them with all manner of flowers and vegetables, herbs and vines, all sprouted proudly from seeds Fai had bought at the town’s market along with a few parting gifts from Syaoran, who had instilled the whole idea in him; handing him a small, paper-light bag of seeds and cuttings, closing Kurogane’s palms over it and whispering his final goodbyes into Kurogane’s shoulder.

 

It had been cathartic for him; replacing the neglected earth still singing of blood with

fresh fruit so ripe it gleamed like jewels under the sun’s glare, candy-pink cosmos next to delicate, sky-blue impatiens, sunflowers that grew as tall as his memory of Sakura. He’d replaced the unholy ground that had festered in his absence, had grown weeds and housed unwelcome vermin; he’d turned it into a veritable shrine of sorts, dedicated to the memory of his parents, to the beauty of the life he had shared with them. 

 

Fai had not joined him, at first. Instead, he had brought Kurogane heavy pitchers of sweet tea cooled with ice, had dragged him back inside the shade of the house when night fell and he grew too exhausted to move. Had put steady hands to shaking ones, carefully rubbing sore muscles and fingers blistered with an ancient ache. And then, slowly, Fai had begun to join him: first, fetching pails of water with wringing, uncertain hands; watering the bed of zinnias furtively, as if he was trespassing, as if even the flowers would reject his touch. Then, as they came to bloom in incandescent shades of blues and pinks, healthy and _alive_ , he had joined Kurogane further afield, bare shoulders pressed together as they laid the final cuttings in the soil, faces dirt-stained and wind-battered. (And, in Fai’s case, incredibly sunburnt).  

 

Stepping into the house was, surprisingly, easier. A house was a house, he had thought, only wood and stone, walls and floor, but he’d still seen the ghosts of his past down every hallway, in every room. His mother at the shrine, forever kneeling in a prayer cut eternally short; the sight of his father’s robe at the peripheries of his vision, always just out of reach, even in the confines of his own mind.

 

In this way, Fai had saved him; his presence in Kurogane’s childhood home, feet stepping softly down the hallways Kurogane had once walked down beside his parents as a child, had rewrote old, painful memories, created new ones – this time filled with the sound of Fai’s voice, genuine and too loud, as if it was just now realising it was finally allowed to take up space, could exist _freely_ here. And he’d left his mark everywhere Kurogane looks now, in the shrine’s careful assortment of foreign talismans and books, in the bookshelves lined with scrolls and spells in dozens of languages, in the long strands of golden hair left on his sheets.

 

Fai’s asleep now, though. Kurogane had left him in his bed, curled on his side under a mountain of woollen blankets. Kurogane had woken from a fitful, half-remembered dream, sweat sticking to his skin and soaking the sheets, the taste of bile at the roof of his mouth, and had decided to start the day’s tasks early, certain that sleep would be evading him for the rest of the early morning. Kneeling in the freshly-turned soil, the scent of early-morning dew sticking to his bare skin, cradling earthworms in his palms, snipping stems and pruning leaves would take his mind off the sickness he felt, the clammy unease that had weighed down his shoulders for a few days now.    

 

When he steps outside, he shivers as the cold morning chill brushes over his exposed skin, raising goosebumps on the flesh of his arms in its wake. Before he can retrieve his tools from the chest, he notices a small figure making its way across the narrow pathway that leads from the main road to his home. The likelihood is that it’s Kyotani-san, or any of the other guardsmen from the city, coming to update him on any news about the Tokoyami murders or the whereabouts of the missing woman, so he relaxes, dampening down his instinctive urge to go find Ginryuu.

 

Instead, he waits for it to approach, fingers itching in his sword’s absence. It’s a tall, long-haired man, dressed in formal court robes, dishevelled and wind-battered. His eyes light up behind his spectacles when he sees Kurogane on the veranda, waiting, and he digs out a scroll bound together tightly with a strap of leather emblazoned with Amaterasu’s royal crest.

 

“My lord!” he says, voice rough with the kind of disuse that comes from a long journey. He hands the scroll over to Kurogane, who takes it warily.

 

“Princess Tomoyo sends her regards,” the man says, bowing so deeply his spectacles slide down his nose.

 

“Of course she does,” he mutters, opening up the scroll with an unexpected amount of relief at the sound of Tomoyo’s name. “Come in,” he says to the man, pulling the door aside with his free hand. “I’ll make tea.”

 

“Thank you, my lord.” He bows again, this time gratefully.

 

Kurogane leads him into their tea room, kicking the door shut behind them before realising that Fai was still asleep and catching it before it slammed shut. He closes it gently, glaring at the messenger who’s now sitting, cross-legged and straight-backed on the floor, looking far too amused.

 

Kurogane sets the tea to steep, muttering a quick excuse to the messenger, who nods politely, and he leaves, reading the letter in the morning light just beginning to filter through their windows.

 

It’s from Tomoyo, immediately obvious as he spots her clear, flowing script, so precise it resembled the calligraphy scrolls used to teach him when he was a child. He skims through it quickly, trying to discern the overall message.

 

 _I am sorry_ , she’s written, a few paragraphs in, _We are fighting our own battles at the border, Kurogane-kun. You’ll have to deal with this yourself. Remember, you’re a lord now. This is your responsibility. I have faith in you._

It’s what he expected from them, even when he’d sent the letter requesting help, reasoning that at least it was updating Tomoyo on how he was coping in Suwa. He writes to her often, nowadays. These days, she’s too busy of late to visit Suwa in person, instead keeping vigil at Shirasagi castle with her sister, readying their armies and reinforcing the city under fear of new threats looming beyond their western border.

 

He was spared most of the details when he’d stayed at Shirasagi castle with Fai after they’d first arrived in Nihon; partly because Tomoyo had thought, correctly as it turns out, that returning to Suwa would already test his strength; mostly because he had had no interest in seeking out any more knowledge than strictly necessary. He trusted his countrymen, and he trusted Tomoyo above them, but he knew himself well enough to realise had he learnt more about the growing unrest west of Nihon, he’d be tempted to take the excuse to never return to Suwa, instead spending the rest of his life the same way he had spent it till now – in battle, sword wet with blood that had begun dripping into his dreams, haunting every step he took, every breath he held. And he refused to do that – not to Fai, who he had promised a home. A life.

 

A vow he would keep for as long as Fai would let him.

 

Receiving no help stings less, then, knowing how stretched Tomoyo already is. But it removes his last avenue of help – his final chance at relinquishing responsibility from the situation which feels, more and more, outside of his control. There’s a sharp pain in his hand, and he flinches, looking down and realising he’d unintentionally crumpled the scroll with his flesh hand, its sharp edges digging into his skin, drawing a line of blood already beading up at the surface. He smooths out the scroll, intending to store it with the rest of his letters from Tomoyo, and then puts pressure on the cut with his synthetic hand. Stems the bleeding, and when he pulls back, his own blood glitters on the metal of his hand, dark and vibrant.

 

*

 

After the messenger finishes his tea, he rushes off, refusing Kurogane’s offer of a room for him to rest in, claiming he had more scrolls to deliver with less time than he’d anticipated. He leaves, and Kurogane goes back to his bedroom, dresses in summer-light clothing sturdy enough for travel, already conscious of the growing heat slicking his forehead with sweat, and sits on his side of his bed, waiting for daylight to break completely so he can make the ride into the city.

 

Fai is deep in sleep, not stirring even when Kurogane had sat down beside his curled-tight body, when he had stroked his hand over Fai’s forehead, brushing aside loose strands of hair that had fallen against the soft curve of his mouth. Kurogane grimaces: it’s something he’s used to now, waking in alarm, feeling as if the breath was trapped in his lungs, only to end up spitting out Fai’s hair from his mouth, which had somehow draped across half of his face.        

 

Fai murmurs something in his sleep, low and hurried, and he turns his head slightly, leaning into Kurogane’s touch, like a stray cat nuzzling into the warmth of a stranger’s palm, openly seeking affection in a way he would never do when he was awake.

 

And Kurogane thinks, sometimes, that he fell in the love with the ghost of a man; his golden raiment, his half-jewelled smile, a man existing outside of himself for as long as he could remember, shrouded underneath his best pretension of personhood. But Kurogane knows now that he loves the ghost _and_ he loves the man underneath, both of them inseparable, inextricable as could be. Neither of them complete without the other. He loves Fai, with all the tassels and all the thread, all the ghosts, the demons, but none of the appropriate restraint.

 

“If you think any harder, steam’s going to come out of your head, Kuro-sama,” comes a sleep-muffled voice, then a yawn, soft and drowsy.

 

Kurogane flicks Fai’s forehead, lightly, and Fai’s eyes snap open, mouth turned downwards in a betrayed pout of plush lips; the effect somewhat ruined by the stream of drool drying on his chin.

 

“Ouch!” he says, half-heartedly protesting, rubbing his forehead with one hand. Kurogane catches the other, already snaking around under the blanket to undoubtedly deliver deserved retribution to his leg.             

 

“How do you have so much energy when you _just_ woke up,” he asks, exasperated, pinning Fai’s other hand down as he struggles to retaliate, eyes already sharp and alert, gleaming with the prospect of revenge.

 

“What can I say,” says Fai, huffing with the effort of wriggling out of Kurogane’s iron grip. “I’m –” And his words are cut off abruptly as he struggles too hard in the wrong direction, tumbling straight down off the far edge of the bed. Kurogane lurches forward instinctively, manages to snag the longest edge of Fai’s nightshirt in his hand, but it does nothing to stop Fai’s descent, instead only pulling Kurogane forward a few inches before tearing away from the cloth altogether.   

 

Kurogane moves further forward on the bed, peers over the edge, holding back the peals of laughter already rising up in his throat, only to see Fai looking back up at him, pout even more pronounced, but shoulders shaking with the effort of restraining his own giggles, which he gives in to, almost immediately, when he sees Kurogane’s face. The sound of their laughter alights the morning air, loud and raucous, breaking the fragile peace of moments ago.

 

“Help me up,” Fai says, still giggling. “Since you were the one who threw me down here.”

 

“I was _not_ ,” he protests, hands already reaching out in the space between them to clasp Fai’s in his own, pulling him up to sit on the bed beside him, bare knee touching his clothed one. This close, all he can smell is Fai’s lavender hair wash and the ozone breeze that clings to his skin, especially heady when he lets his magic thrum just beneath the expanse of his skin. “You did that by yourself, genius.”

 

Fai’s not listening anymore, though, instead casting a critical eye over Kurogane’s torso and folded legs. “Why are you already dressed?” he asks, reaching over to smooth slim fingers over Kurogane’s clothes, dusting off imaginary imperfections, fixing creases that didn’t exist.  

 

“I’m meeting Kaneko in the city today,” he says. Fai’s fingers still in their trail down his shoulders. “I was just about to leave. But I wanted to see you first.” And the words come easy to his tongue now; leave his mouth, unashamed and unafraid, to pinken the curve of Fai’s cheeks, crinkle the corners of his pale eyes when he smiles.

 

“Follow me,” Fai says to him in lieu of a reply, settling his hand on Kurogane’s shoulder and urging him off the bed to follow him through the house to the shrine.  

 

When they arrive, Fai leans down, digging through a small drawer labelled in a language Kurogane can’t read and pulls out a bundle of hemp cloths; the kind his mother would tie around his neck when he was ill, fingers warm and gentle as they brushed fevered skin. He sorts through them, discarding one after the other on the dais until he finds one with the right inscription. Kurogane can only make out a few words emblazoned on the cloth, but from what he reads, he guesses it’s a protection spell of some kind.

 

“Wear this around your neck,” Fai says, swiftly threading the cloth through a black thread and tying it off with practised, nimble fingers. “Don’t take it off.”

 

“I won’t.”

 

Fai finishes with the thread and settles his hands on Kurogane’s shoulders, pressing downwards. “Bend down,” he orders, and Kurogane obeys. Fai moves to stand behind him, and he fights down the instinctive, primal urge to flinch away, protect that fragile area of his neck where the blood pulsed close to his skin, so easily spilt in one practised motion. But Fai’s fingers, when they press against him, are cool and light to the touch, his breath fanning over the dip of Kurogane’s back, just above the hemline of his clothes, and he doesn’t move away, instead allowing his body to savour the intimacy, consolidate the one fact that every part of him seemed to instinctively know: that he trusted this man. Above all else.

 

Fai moves back in front of him, puts both hands on either side of Kurogane’s face, gently rubbing cold thumbs against the curve of his cheekbones, and he whispers something in the old language, mouth sounding out words that were once foreign to him with a practised ease, and Kurogane can feel the hum of Fai’s electric-sharp magic pulse through him, setting his nerve endings alight, as deeply familiar to him as the beat of his own heart against his ribs.

 

“I’ll be back soon,” says Kurogane when Fai drops his hands, and he can’t stop himself from bowing his head, pressing his lips against Fai’s blanket-creased forehead in a lingering kiss just this edge of too long. Fai inhales sharply, as if the breath had been punched out of him, eyes wide and questioning.

 

And when Kurogane manages to tear himself away, turning to leave, Fai catches the sleeve of his robe, stilling him in place.

 

“Be careful, Kuro-sama,” he says, eyes earnest.

 

He pulls Fai’s fingers off his sleeve, presses the tips of them against his lips.

 

“I will.” A promise. A vow.

 

*

 

It’s warmer today than it has been in the recent weeks, the sun’s heat enveloping his skin in a sticky embrace as soon as he steps outside to saddle up his horse. And with its sudden appearance, the last vestiges of ice remaining melt away completely, he notices as he kicks at the stable’s ground, testing its grip, so he doesn’t have to fear Mari slipping during their journey. She neighs softly as soon as she takes sight of him, trotting up and nuzzling his palm. And he can’t help but smile as she starts sniffing his hand, already seeking out treats she knows he’s brought for her.

 

“Wait a second,” he says, and she trills back to him, loud and insistent, as if she could understand his words. He digs out one of the crisp red apples he’d stored in his bag for lunch and holds it out to her. She latches onto it immediately, devouring it within seconds, teeth ripping into its flesh with abandon.

 

“You’re hungry today, aren’t you,” he says, amused, and she noses at his bag. “Fine, fine,” he relents, holding out another apple for her. “But only if we go after this one,” he amends. She neighs her agreement.

 

The ride into the city follows one continuous path, snaking its way through his parents’ land and then converging with the adjoining main road, which goes all the way through to the city’s southern border. The main path lies under the shadow of a looming mountain range, ancient and remote, that his father had claimed had done more for protecting Suwa from invaders than the entire might of its army. His mother, on the other hand, had told stories of its ancient shrines, built before Nihon had even existed, dedicated to worshipping nameless deities that had been lost to time.

 

She had said it was a pilgrimage site, for the desperate, the sick, the hopeless; people who had exhausted every other holy avenue, leaving only the treacherous route to the summit of the highest mountain, called Tekari in the legends. Few attempted the journey, though, and even fewer returned. In his childhood, only one woman had made it to the frozen peak and returned; she had been dying slowly of the coughing illness, ghost-pale and corpse-like when she had arrived in Suwa, pink-cheeked and laughing without a wheeze to be heard when she had left.

 

He reaches the southern entrance, nodding to the stationed guards, who let him through the wrought-iron gate after exchanging quick greetings. He rides a little further in, stopping at the stable a few paces away, where he stills Mari with a pull on her reins. She skids to a halt, and he dismounts, unsaddling her and giving the reins to the stablemaster’s daughter, who tries to pull Mari along with her. But Mari resists, casting a mournful look at Kurogane; he’s not swayed, though, with the memory of the Tokoyami house’s sweet-mildew stench still strong in his nose, and he thinks to spare Mari’s easily-spooked heart from that feeling.

 

The stable girl tempts Mari with a handful of grapes she’s grabbed from her bag, and she follows, finally, trotting off without a backwards glance to Kurogane. Kaneko, who’s waiting for him by the barracks, spots him then, hand lifting in an excited wave. As he gets closer, Kurogane notices another sash wrapped around his upper arm, where the sleeve of his uniform ends, golden-brown and tied in a pristine knot. A rise in rank.

 

“Kurogane-sama!” Kaneko greets, with his usual overly-enthusiastic bow.

 

“Congratulations,” says Kurogane, gesturing to his arm.

 

Kaneko blushes, high points of colour stark against the darkness of his skin. “Thank you, my lord,” he says. “I got promoted. Kyotani-san said I’d earned it.”

 

His voice is humble, but proud, and his smile is shockingly bright, taking years off his already youthful appearance. There’s a sudden pang in Kurogane’s chest, sharp and painful, and he realises that he misses Syaoran with a frightening intensity. That Kaneko’s cheerful enthusiasm, his hazelnut-brown hair, the way he worries his lip between his teeth when he’s in thought, reminds him so strongly of the kid; stirring up old, treasured memories of both of his children.

 

“Kyotani-san is a smart woman.”

 

Kaneko grins even harder, his nose crinkling up with the force, accepting the praise with grace. “Um, speaking of,” he says. “She told me to take you to the northern barracks to meet her.”

 

Kurogane has other plans, though. “I want to see the Tokoyami house again.” Last time, he had been half sick to his stomach, mind foggy and clouded, thoughts slipping through his head like sand through fingers.                    

 

“But we’ve already searched it,” protests Kaneko, confused. “We didn’t find anything.”

 

“Then a second time wouldn’t do any harm.”

 

The Tokoyami household is as he remembers it: unwelcoming in the extreme, with a musty, sweet-sour smell so thick you could choke on it. As soon as he enters through the back door, he feels an icy chill snake its way up his spine, cold in that heavy, frostbitten way you could feel inside your bones, in sharp contrast to the midday sun alighting the outside air on fire. He shakes his head, wraps his robe tighter around his chest, and he sees Kaneko do the same, face gone pale, mouth pulled down in apprehension. Kurogane can’t fault him for that.

 

The room is pristine, unnervingly spotless, even the space that the bodies had been laying in. But there’s absolutely nothing left – bookshelves, the holy idols, children’s toys, all gone, everything that had suggested that a family had lived here, that they had once been _alive_ , healthy and laughing and talking, in this very room, walking the same steps Kurogane now took, breathing the same air.

 

“It’s all gone,” Kaneko says. “Kyotani-san tore this place apart.”

 

“What about the other rooms?” Kurogane asks, already sliding the next door open and stepping in.

 

It’s the bedroom. Clothes are scattered across the floor in piles of silk, the bedsheets and blankets all torn apart, dressers pulled open and emptied, not a single item spared the cruel treatment. But he somehow knows, can feel in a sharp, visceral way, that somewhere among this chaos, he’s meant to find something; that there’s something here, calling out to him. So he kneels down, picking up the first thing closest to him – a pair of women’s shoes – and upending them, hitting the back to see if anything’s hidden inside.

 

“Well, um, yes, we did. But, really, Kurogane-sama, there’s nothing here, let’s just go –”

 

“You can wait outside,” he says, and Kaneko’s mouth opens in surprise, but he accepts the dismissal, stepping out with one last worried glance at Kurogane.

 

He makes it through half the room before he loses his patience, sits back on his haunches, arm thrown across his forehead to try to relieve the tense ache in his temples, already spreading to the backs of his eyes. His sleeve brushes the tip of his nose, and it smells so strongly of incense and smoke, of _Fai_ , that he wonders why for a second, before he remembers he’d retrieved this shirt of his from Fai’s wardrobe.

 

Fai’s wardrobe. And the bag he kept, tucked away in the back, past all the clothes, shoes, old belongings from Ceres, things he’d picked up from their journey. Hidden away from everyone’s sight. It gives him the idea – he reopens the closet, kneels so he’s half-inside it, and reaches his hand in, this time checking the floor. He doesn’t find anything at first, and his heart sinks, but then his hand hits the back of the closet; there’s a hollow thud instead of a dull one, so he pushes the clothes out of the way, sees a little patch in the wall where the colour of the paint doesn’t match the rest of it by a shade or two. He carefully knocks at it, then peels away the paper someone had stuck there, and reaches in to the hole, his hand hiting what feels like a hard box.

 

He pulls it out, biceps straining with the effort. It looks like a jewellery box in the light of the room, similar to the one his mother had owned, adorned with cresting patterns of silver and gold in various shapes and lettering. But it’s heavy, _much_ too heavy, to purely contain the sort of feathery, delicate jewellery currently in fashion in Suwa. He opens the latch carefully, nicking his finger in the process. When he pulls the lid back, the first thing he notices is that it’s definitely not jewellery.

 

It’s a collection of books and scrolls, ancient talismans and amulets, written in old languages, dead languages; books of curses, books of hexes, some so old and fragile, they fall apart in his hands. And he’s not an expert on magic, not by any means, but he knows enough from his mother’s warning words, the history books he’d studied with his father, that what he’s holding in his hands isn’t like Fai’s magic, or Tomoyo’s. It’s older; wild and frenzied.

 

“Look at these,” Kurogane calls out to Kaneko, who steps in, eyes wide and afraid. Kurogane hands him the box, and Kaneko reaches out to take it with shaking hands. He looks through the books on the top, and his face pales even further, but his hands have stopped shaking, and he looks oddly defiant, in a way.

 

“Did Mari-san have any issues with anyone?” he asks Kaneko, thinking back to the only surviving member of the Tokoyami family.

 

Kaneko worries his chapped lower lip with his teeth. “I’m not the best person to ask about these sorts of things,” he says, hesitantly. “But they _seemed_ fine. My mother likes their meat buns so I visited their bakery quite often. They were always laughing when I was there. It was…nice.”

 

But Kurogane can see his hesitance, clear as day from the lines on his young face, the shaking of his voice, and he gathers that there’s more to this story than Kaneko’s choosing to reveal. He sighs in frustration; it’s been an uphill battle to get the people of his own province – his own _home_ – to try to trust him, but it was to be expected, he thinks resignedly. He’s been gone for what seems like centuries; Kaneko, especially, was young enough to have never even known him, not personally, instead only learning his name through hushed stories and whispers.

 

It’s even more frustrating when he thinks back to how alien Suwa was to him when he’d first arrived – and still is, to an extent. His birthplace, his childhood home, where he had buried his parents, and he couldn’t even remember the road to his own home, couldn’t recognise the city walls. He’d elevated Suwa’s status in his head to something sacred, somewhere beautiful and forever out of reach; at the same time, cultivating a bone-deep _fear_ of it, the place that had been the beginning _(and end)_ of him in so many ways. Stepping into the grass fields for the first time had nearly brought him to his knees, panting for breath he could not catch, chest crushed under the weight of expectation, of bitter hope, for a security that had evaded him his whole life.

 

Kaneko looks at him, considering, and he must see something in Kurogane’s face because he sighs, dragging his hand through the length of his dark hair.

 

“Mei-san had married once before she met Hajime-san,” he says, slowly. “The children were from her first marriage. But it’s not what you think,” he hurries on, seeing the expression change on Kurogane’s face. “He loved those kids. Like they were his own blood. You didn’t know them like I did, apologies for my impoliteness, Kurogane-sama, but they were happy. Everyone could see.”

 

And Kurogane understands, completely and totally. He’d never spoken to this man before, beyond greetings and ordering pastries, but they shared one fundamental truth about themselves: that they were fathers, to children who were not their own, not in any real, tangible way to most outsiders, but it didn’t matter. Kurogane knows himself, knows his own heart, and he recalls the way it had ached for them when they had first separated, the way he had had to bite his tongue to stop himself from trying to convince them to come to Suwa, to build a life here, far away from their own home in Clow.

 

“We’re going,” he says to Kaneko, closing the box securely so he could take it home, get Fai’s opinion on it.

 

Before they leave, Kurogane locks up the house, and Kaneko clears his throat, getting his attention.

 

“Also,” Kaneko says, worrying his sash with his left hand; loosening the knot, retying, then repeating. “We have a favour to ask. Can Fai-san do a purification on the house?”

 

Kurogane’s hands still. “So,” he says. “His job, basically?”

 

“Yes, but I mean – ”

 

“You’re a grown man,” says Kurogane, voice harsher than he’d intended. “You can ask him yourself.”

 

Kaneko is silent, and Kurogane casts a sideways glance at him. “I promise you he’s not that scary.”

 

“I’m not scared! He’s just – you know,” protest Kaneko, mouth tripping over his words in his rush to speak.

 

“Spare me,” interrupts Kurogane, cutting short the conversation. “Let’s go see your boss.”

 

He discusses funeral arrangements with Kyotani-san, as well her plans for extra twilight patrols while the murders remain unsolved and new recruitment for guards, which he approves in a heartbeat. When they’re finished, he finds Mari, well-fed and groomed after her stay at the stables, and leaves, just as night begins to fall over Suwa. He hears the sound of Fai’s voice when he gets home, deeper, more focused, when he prays, or speaks incantations, so he heads straight to their bedroom without disturbing him. He drifts off, slowly and carefully, with the scent and heat of Fai still left in the sheets wrapped around him.

 

*

 

There’s a teacup in front of him.

 

It’s from his mother’s old tea set, the one he keeps carefully locked away with the rest of her belongings; carefully painted fine china, small and delicate to the touch, almost preserved perfectly, even after all this time. It sits alone in the centre of the table, the stark white of its sharp patterns a slash of ivory against the table’s dark wood. Plumes of steam dance atop its rim in elaborate figure eights, and his eyes follow the patterns up and up.

                                                                        

He’s in the tea room. But there’s the shape of something with its back to him standing in front of the table, only a breath’s distance away from him. He’s intimately aware of the shape of it, though. It’s Fai. Fai’s soft blond curls he recognises, the sweep of his slim shoulders, the drape of his morning robe. But it’s _wrong_ somehow, wrong in some tiny minutiae; a curl that’s a bit too askew, a fold of white fabric that doesn’t sit right. A posture that stands too tall, too relaxed.

 

“Fai?” he asks, and he almost doesn’t recognise his own whisper-soft voice, hesitant and wavering in the air between them; which is stale inside the cradle of his lungs, suffocating in its necessity. And no matter how hard he draws his breath, it’s not enough; it doesn’t satisfy any fraction of this acidic sickness _(hunger)_ within him.

 

Then he becomes aware, slowly, with the sluggish beat of his heart, the needle-sharp pounding in his head, that there’s something deeply wrong with all of this, some indistinct quality to the ground beneath his feet, as if he could sink right through it, an eternal fall through the bitter unknown that lays beyond. And a primal instinct, one that’s served him well countless times in battle, raises his hackles, sharpens his dull eyes, but the dream drags his head back underwater, as if it’s slowly drowning him, choking him with its soothing, clawed hands.  

 

The shape of Fai, as if sensing his thoughts, stills. It tilts its head slightly to the side, hair bouncing around its ears. It doesn’t turn around, and Kurogane feels his trepidation rise in his throat, the hair on the back of his neck already standing on end, alert and prepared.

                                                    

“Fai, turn around,” he half-pleads. He tries to move his legs this time, to rise onto his feet, but they refuse to obey him, the motor commands lost somewhere on their way down to his limbs. He struggles even harder, but he can’t move, not even the slightest of motions, and something bites into his skin as he struggles, rough and unforgiving. Long, jagged wounds claw down the exposed skin of his arms and legs, deep and wide, and he stops, panting from the white-hot, burning pain of it.

 

“Fai!” he shouts, looking up. “Turn around!”

 

The shape of Fai turns. His throat is a bloody mess; red viscera against shreds of pale skin, veins and arteries and tendons visible through the meat. It’s a ragged cut; delivered by inexperienced hands, or shaking ones, trembling too hard to hold the knife against skin, wound deep and shallow then deep and shallow again. Blood bubbling, spurting in long streaks against the wreckage of his throat but his clothes are perfect, ivory-white. His hair is perfect. Sunlight gold. He’s holding the matching teapot in his hands.

 

And there’s a broken howl, torn from his own throat, loud and desperate, and he manages to break through the invisible bonds tying him down, heedless of the clawing tearing his own wrists apart, knocking the table over as he stands on shaky legs. The teacup shatters as it falls to the floor, a myriad of shards, jagged and unmade, scattering across the room; cutting into the soles of his feet as he steps across them, reaching out for Fai.

 

But as soon as he touches Fai, the second their skin brushes together, he drops like a marionette’s strings being cut. Kurogane catches him before he falls completely, cradles the feather weight of him in his arms, tucked against his chest, but Fai’s eyes are dull, only the white sclera visible, no matter how many times Kurogane shakes him, no matter how deep he digs his fingers into Fai’s skin, as if he could reach inside of him and hold Fai’s heart in his hands, set it beating again with his fingers alone.

 

Kurogane tries desperately to recall the basic first aid he had learnt while training to be part of Tomoyo’s guard, and he presses his fingers into what’s left of Fai’s throat, against the cartilage of his thyroid, fanning his fingers back to clamp the jugular veins, as tight as he can, trying to stem the blood flow. But Fai’s losing more than his body can replenish, and all Kurogane can feel is sinew and torn muscle and cartilage and there’s nothing left he can do, Fai’s already–

 

He coughs, back arching in a perfect curve with the effort, shoulders hunched and tense. Dark red blood, too viscous to be natural, spurts out of the corner of his mouth, dripping down his chin, too stark against the deathly-pale, still clean sweep of the skin on his face. Kurogane’s thumb comes up, almost involuntarily, and he brushes it over the corner of Fai’s mouth, smearing the colour against his cheek, matching the red hue of his neck. It’s warm, but Fai’s skin is ice-cold, leeching the heat out of Kurogane’s fingers in the few seconds they’re pressed together.

 

“Why,” chokes out Fai, low and rough and almost inhuman. “Did… you.” And he stops, wheezes a rattling, wet breath, then coughs and coughs and coughs until Kurogane’s ears are ringing with the harsh sound, scratching double-time against the raw skin of his eardrums.

 

“I didn’t,” Kurogane whispers, stroking his fingers through Fai’s hair, as gently as his fingers know how. “You know I couldn’t.” He presses his head down, tucking it tight against Fai’s sticky-wet forehead, golden strands now matted with blood and viscera stuck against his cheeks and temple. The scent of copper greets his nose, oddly soothing in its familiarity; from how often he’s cleaned Ginryuu of it, or replacing his own bandages soaking and reeking of it, or every time he’d offered his own neck or wrist to Fai. And, distantly, he thinks it’s _so_ odd, so painfully, laughably odd, how the blood of the man he loves harder than his own life smells the same – even _feels_ the same – as all the rest of the blood Kurogane’s ever spilt.

 

There’s a cold touch against the back of his head; Fai’s hands pressing him down so his lips meet the curve of Fai’s, a mockery of a kiss, a cheap imitation tasting of metallic copper and iron on his tongue, and he chokes on it, unable to move away, to even shut his eyes. Their first kiss. Him gagging on it, aching heart giving way to cheeks wet with salty tears; Fai a white-eyed ghost, suffocating in his own ichor.

 

But as he stares at Fai’s eyes, slowly, puzzle piece by piece, the picture fades, edges blurred and indistinct, only to be replaced by another likeness of Fai, but this time his eyes are wide and confused; somehow the _real_ Fai, beautiful in all his bag-eyed, messy-haired glory. Skin sun-burnt, raw and peeling on his cheeks, but blessedly free of blood.

 

“Kuro-tan, what’s wrong– ” He puts a hand on Kurogane’s shoulder where it lays against the bed, and he flinches away violently, back slamming into the wall as he lurches off the bed.

 

“Calm down,” Fai says, voice low and soothing. He reaches out and places his hand on Kurogane’s bicep, tight enough to hold on. It’s a touch they’ve given each other countless times before, in countless places, but now it sets his heart pounding unsteadily, and he can’t handle it, can’t handle any of it, the way Fai’s looking at him, the dark circles under his eyes, the eyelash caught helpless on his cheek, the echo of his choking wheeze from his dream.

 

“Let go of me,” he says, and the words leave his tongue quietly but somehow, it’s worse than if he’d shouted himself hoarse, and Fai’s hand leaves his skin as quickly as it came, drawing back as if scalded by his words.

 

Kurogane doesn’t look at Fai, can’t bear to see his face, and keeps his head bowed and eyes down when he turns on his heel to leave, the acrid taste of bile stinging on the roof of his mouth. He slams open the door to their garden, stumbles out on trembling legs and falls onto his knees, as if prostrating in prayer, and retches out all the food he’s eaten today, over his newly planted bed of anemones. And when he looks up, wipes his hand over the back of his sticky mouth, he sees something far away in the distance, standing under their willow tree, its dark silhouette illuminated by the moonlight. Watching. Waiting.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for not updating in a year :( university has been kicking my ass but i'm on holiday right now and i aim to finish this soon! 
> 
> accidental baby acquisition in the next chapter! (god i love that tag.)


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